Planning biomass energy production in a farming area

Optimal running and planning of a biomass-based energy production process

We propose mathematical programming models for solving problems arising from planning and running an energy production process based on burning biomasses. The models take into account different aspects of the problem: determination of the biomasses to produce and/or buy, transportation decisions to convey the materials to the respective plants, and plant site locations. Whereas the “running mod...

Mathematical models for optimizing production chain planning in salmon farming

The salmon farming production chain is structured in four consecutive phases: freshwater, seawater, plant processing, and distribution and marketing. The phases interact in a pull manner, freshwater stocks fish to meet seawater’s demand, seawater produces to meet plant processing biomass demand, and the processing plant produces to satisfy consumers’ demand. Freshwater planning decisions are in...

Energy production from biomass (Part 1): Overview of biomass.

The use of renewable energy sources is becoming increasingly necessary, if we are to achieve the changes required to address the impacts of global warming. Biomass is the most common form of renewable energy, widely used in the third world but until recently, less so in the Western world. Latterly much attention has been focused on identifying suitable biomass species, which can provide high-en...

Sustainable Production of Woody Biomass for Energy

Optimally running a biomass-based energy production process

A multi-plant biomass-based energy production process is able to extract the chemical energy from various agricultural products. Such a process consists of several plants that are able to deal with biomasses of different types. Each type of plant has distinct mass-to-energy yields for each particular product type. Since the scale of the process may be geographically wide, transportation costs a...